Sounding The Seventh Trumpet (2001) "Turn The Other Way"

[Reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]

Slit my wrists, take away the pain.
Slit my throat, everyone's to blame.
Lost in the fields of confusion.
Restless nights, they're not far away.
I came here for something and I'm not turning back.
A calm piece of mind but you still hold my keys.
Keeping my fate deep within your threshold.
Petty inconvenience but it means the world to me.
You have the power.
To set me free.
Caught in your grasp, how?
Just let me be.
Give me control out.
Out of these depths.
A fiery hell.
I pray for death.
I've been the wrong one time and time again.
Now I'm on my knees forgive me please.
Tore out my heart and handed to me on a silver platter.
Sew up the hole, emptiness in the place of compassion.
You made me this way.
I am the product of your creation.
Look the other way.
Now you've turned your back on me.
You've turned away from me, the future's much to far away to see.
I hope you learn the truth, not the way things were meant to be with me and you.

Who is he singing to? Is it his parents? His lover? His God?

He is torn, and the anguish has brought him to the utter depths. Those who have been here know what it is like to gaze in silence at a razor and, with inner vision, see its thin blade leave red lines on one's wrists. For on the one hand, the pain would cut through the numbness of beyond-pain, and on the other, the ebbing blood would mean rest at last.

Does the poet truly believe that everyone but himself is to blame for the wrestling of his soul? He wants out. He wants the One Who holds him to let him go ~

As the Psalmist said

O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,"
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.

The poet rails against the Lord, blaming God for making him the way he is, accusing God of tearing his heart out, making him void of compassion, only a man with an empty hole where love used to be. He senses God's wrath against him, but instead of owning up to his own choice to embrace evil, he pushes the blame on God, saying He has turned his back on him, yet perversely will not give him the keys to the future he thinks he wants.

He pretends to be on his knees in supplication, but we see that in his heart, in his spirit, he is standing defiantly, shaking his fist at God, all fury and bitterness, an aggrieved accuser.

Somehow the poet's parting shot to God is a final accusation that God is the one living in a fantasy, thinking that this man will be saved (because he was born to a churched family? Because he was baptised as a baby?).

This is A7X's second song, and their debut statement of faith: "We are being held against our wills by a God Who won't let us go."

[From the poet's point of view this is an abusive relationship from which he either doesn't have the courage or the power to leave]

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